


All Around Me

by Ultra



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M, Happy, Love, POV River Tam, Post-Serenity (2005), Safe Haven, Understanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-24
Updated: 2011-11-24
Packaged: 2020-02-29 15:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18781426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ultra/pseuds/Ultra
Summary: All her life, eyes had been on her... Seven out of nine were to blame, one was different.





	All Around Me

**Author's Note:**

> originally written for basched on Livejournal for a prompt meme.

All her life, eyes had been on her. She had been surrounded by those that would watch and judge and interfere, and she hated it all.

To dance was to live for River Tam, but the audience that stared through every recital were oppressive rather than uplifting. She pushed them out and away, closed her eyes as she owned the stage, willed the world away, so far away.

In study she was the thing to be studied, the insect under the microscope to be checked, dissected, graded. Parents that were judge and jury, unknowingly executioner of her near-loveless childhood.

Then came the teachers and doctors. The agents that watched her, tested her, crept inside her mind and violated all she had left to call her own mind.

Since then the walls closed in on her, crushing her fragile mind, her very being. She crumpled beneath the weight of all they did to her, all they imposed upon her, and she almost faded away entirely into what they wanted her to become.

Simon saved her and condemned her all in one. Life now was still as monitored and watched as ever. Drugs pushed into her skin, needles and pins, it was nothing compared to the overwhelming pushing force of eyes that watched, hands that held her back, strict orders that were to keep her safe and keep her jailed all in one.

Seven out of nine were to blame, one was different.

Though he watched her too, Jayne’s care and attention was never oppressive to the girl. His arms around her were safe and calming, brought her back from a brink too far.

The first time he kissed her was the most free she ever felt. Though he wished to claim her as his own, he would never stifle her, never bolt the door on her imagination or abilities. He was prepared to let her run free and wild and deal with any consequences; he was the only one she could trust to be capable of it.

“I can feel you all around me,” she told him, calling out from the cargo bay up onto the walkway where he stood watching her dance.

He didn’t wonder at how she knew of his presence even with her eyes closed. She always knew, and it had long since stopped bothering him as to how.

“He is the warmth of the sun in the depths of cold dark space, and the safety net to catch her if she falls too far.” She smiled brightly, opening her eyes then as she looked up at him, beaming.

“And she is a crazy ass little woman who ought be on the bridge afore Mal has her hide for flyin’ us into some asteroid or other,” he told her, leaning over the rail and leering at the view it afforded him.

River rolled her eyes.

“She is to handle Serenity before she handles him.” She poked out her tongue before running at the stairs and up to him.

Jayne couldn’t get the smile off his face as she bolted up those steps and threw herself into his strong arms to kiss him hard on the mouth.

“Go on, get!” he told her, ifling her towards the bridge and smacking her on the backside for good measure as she went, knowing if she stayed he was just going to drag her off to his bunk and neither of them would get any kind of work done!

All the way to the bridge River could still feel her Jayne, as she could feel him everywhere. He was always with her, as she was always with him.

They were two halves of the whole and perfectly matched in such ways as the rest of the ‘verse would never truly understand, and River didn’t care to explain it either.


End file.
